Entire Volume 17 issue 1 - Journal of World-Systems Research ...

EXTERNALITY AND INCORPORATION 174
In the twelfth century, the Eastern Hemisphere contained a series of empires and
small worlds, many of which were interlinked at their edges with each other. At
that time, the Mediterranean was one focus of trade where Byzantium, Italian
city-states, and to some extent parts of northern Africa met. The Indian Ocean-
Red Sea complex formed another such focus (Wallerstein 1974:17).
As discussed, Abyssinia née Axum was a peripheral part of the early Mediterranean world
economy through linkages with Egypt. But this relationship to the Mediterranean was also
predicated on the position of Abyssinia vis-à-vis the Red Sea trade, and the neighboring Indian
Ocean complex. Further, Abyssinia was situated to extract benefit from the trans-Sudan Sahel
trade networks of the African interior as goods traveled to and from the coastal ports. It is
precisely because these early world-economies were interlinked at their edges that Abyssinia
developed, producing the “Golden Age of the Solomonic Dynasty”, ca. 1270-1500 (Marcus
1994:17-30). Abyssinia was the nexus by which these world-economies were hinged.
The import of these linkages becomes clearer when one examines Portuguese expansion
and its impact on the Levant’s “decline”, as it mirrors several structural features of the trade
exploited by Abyssinia. With Portugal’s entrance into the Indian Ocean, the eastern
Mediterranean spice trade went into decline due to “the structural diversion of trade and hence its
noninclusion in the expanding European world-economy” (Wallerstein 1974:325). This is well
and good, and indicates that regions favorably impacted by the “structural diversion of trade”
should be included in the European world-economy - yet this neglects the same consideration be
given to regions negatively impacted. Indeed, after 1500 the Indian Ocean was essentially a
Portuguese lake:
In any case from about 1509 when the Portuguese defeated the Egyptian fleet at
Diú, the Portuguese navy held ‘uncontested hegemony’ in the Indian Ocean. In
addition, during the sixteenth century …Portuguese traders were to be found not
only there but in the China Sea, on the coasts of Africa east and west, in the south
Atlantic, in Newfoundland, and of course in Europe. ‘Thus, present everywhere,
a Portuguese economy’ (Wallerstein 1974:327).
If the region is under uncontested Portuguese hegemony and reflects the presence of a Portuguese
(thus European) economy, why would it not be part of the European world-economy?
There are two reasons, one theoretical and one practical, that the Indian Ocean worldeconomy
– hence Abyssinia peripherally – is not part of the European world-economy.
Practically, Portuguese control in the Indian Ocean complex was maintained quite simply, by
monitoring access, not production. Two squadrons were used in conjunction with a network of
fortresses. One fleet patrolled the western coast of India and the other blocked the Red Sea.
Thus, the empire-building trade astride which the Solomonic Dynasty grew was diverted from the
traditional Red Sea - Egypt and trans-Sudan networks and began to flow around Africa under